9. The Battle of Guilford Courthouse with Jason Ba
Transcript
William: Hey everyone and welcome to Southern War, a podcast about the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. I'm Ranger William from Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail.
[Intro sounds of drums, horses, muskets, swards, and men fighting]
Adrian: And I'm Ranger Adrian from Ninety Six National Historic Site.
William: And together we will get into some of the known and not so known stories about the American Revolution here in the South. Let's dive into it.
[sounds of drums, horses, muskets, swards, and men fighting]
William: So today we are joined with our special guest Jason Baum from Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. Jason, thanks for joining us.
Jason: Well, thanks for having me. I was excited when you guys told me about this project.
William: Absolutely. Before we get too much into the details about Guilford Courthouse and this amazing battle of the American Revolution, let's talk about you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your connection with this topic?
Jason: So yeah, so my journey into the world of being a Park Ranger starts way back when I got a history degree at Ohio University. And then from there I spent four years in the Army as an intelligence officer and I bring that up because to me, those same skills are what any historian needs, which is the ability to take a bunch of different information, bring it all together and try and understand what the coherent picture is from all those details. So after I spent about four years in the Army, I then came to Greensboro, North Carolina, not specifically for Guildford, originally I came here to go to grad school at UNC Greensboro. I got a degree in Museum Studies and then while I was doing that, that's when I started as an intern at Guilford Courthouse. And then I was lucky enough to turn the internship into a seasonal Ranger position. And then I had the dumbest luck in the world when I turned that seasonal Ranger position into a permanent position and I have been here at Guildford for going on 8 1/2 years now.
Adrian: Awesome.
William: You caught the Unicorn, my friend.
Jason: I did. I really did.
Adrian: Well, that's great. So you said, sounds like you're still in Greensboro, for the listeners that don't know, can you tell us where’s Greensboro? Was it called Greensboro at the time that the battle took place? If not, what's it called?
Jason: Ohh yeah, so Greensboro is in the central Piedmont area of North Carolina. So when we talk about the Piedmont, if you were to divide North Carolina into thirds, we were in the upper part of the middle third of North Carolina and Greensboro wasn't founded until the 19th century. So if you were to be here on the day of battle, March 15th, 1781, it would have been very sparsely populated and the county we are in Guilford County was brand new. It had only been created back in 1771 and it was much larger than it is today, and so the whole reason this place is even here, the reason we know about it is, as you can imagine, the name Guilford Courthouse is because the original County Courthouse was originally put in this area. Eventually it will get moved in the 19th century and that will is what will lead to the founding of Greenesboro. And so today, we're the park is is if you were to come visit the city of Greenesboro, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park is in the northwest kind of corner of the suburbs. Uh, we have an outer belt around the city, so you can almost imagine like a giant clock face. If the center of the city, is the middle of the clock, we're up around the 11:00 o'clock part of the clock face.
William: Do we know who Guilford County was named after?
Jason: The Earl of Guilford. And so it's funny that it was named for the first Earl of Guilford. But the ironic thing is that the Prime Minister during the war, Lord North, he would eventually become the next Earl of Guilford.
William: So not named after Lord North, thankfully, we're going to avoid that one.
Jason: Yeah.
William: So we're talking about this, you mentioned that the Battle of Guilford Courthouse is going to take place March 15th, 1781. Before we get into the nitty gritty of the actual battle itself, can you set the scene for us? What is going to be leading up to the battle? What is bringing these armies into a part of North Carolina where it sounds like there's not any key features that they're gonna be fighting over? And then who are some of the players on the board bringing their armies to the field?
Jason: So I always tell people the battle of Guilford Courthouse or the Guilford Courthouse campaign starts because of the Battle of Cowpens. It starts the day afterwards, so basically day after Cornwallis now has to figure out what to do now that a huge chunk of all his light troops have just been killed, wounded or captured, and so very quickly, he has reinforcements who are already on their way up to him, who are going to meet him up in northwest South Carolina and he decides to launch after Daniel Morgan's troops. Daniel Morgan would be the American commander in charge of the wing that had just been at Cowpens, and initially the idea was Cornwallis is gonna lunge after him, and at the very least maybe he would free his prisoners from Cowpens. Or at maybe you know, things go his way, he catches Morgan's troops and crushes them, which is the what they were trying to do at Cowpens. He goes after him, he falls behind very quickly and Morgan gets away and he will get across the Catawba River. And while that's happening Cornwallis has to decide what he’s going to do because he had wanted to invade North Carolina at the end of 1780 but had had to the pull back because mainly of camp sickness running through his army but he'd also met stiff militia resistance around Charlotte. So what he's gonna do is he's gonna decide to keep going. He's gonna burn his excess baggage and wagons. So he's not burning everything, but they're burning all the nonessential baggage and they're burning several wagons, but they do keep a few. They have just enough wagons with them that they will be able to carry salt because in that time, if you've got, you found any food or you foraged for food, the way you preserve things like meats with salt, you would keep another wagon to carry your ammunition, and you kept a couple of wagons to carry any wounded you might incur along the campaign. So with that in mind, corn loss is burning the excess baggage and wagons to lighten up his army. So hopefully he can catch the Americans, and he's gonna spend the next several weeks, January, February and early March chasing Greene around North Carolina trying to get him to stop trying to get him to turn and fight him so he can finally crush him. And failing to get him to do so. We call it the race to the Dan as one section of it, because Greene is going to get his army all the way up to Virginia, crossed the Dan River, and when Cornwallis finally catches up to him, he sees that the river is swollen from winter rains and all the boats are on the other side of the river, and so he can't get after him. So at that point, Cornwallis comes back into North Carolina. He goes to Hillsborough and he reassesses what's his options are. He didn't free his prisoners from Cowpens. He didn't get the Americans to stop and fight him, so he couldn't destroy that army. Well then something else he could possibly do is recruit Loyalists because I mean, that's one of the major motivators for them coming down to the South to begin with; recruit Loyalists to kind of bulk up your army since you have to send more men and more ships to go fight the French once they join the war. So Cornwallis goes to Hillsborough. He raises the King’s standard and tons of people come into town. They say thank God you're here. we're still happy to see you and then they go home. The recruits and the supplies do not materialize that Cornwallis was hoping for. Meanwhile, Greene knows he can't just let Cornwallis sit in North Carolina uncontested. So Greene comes back down and he sends ahead Andrew Pickens and Lighthorse Harry Lee to harass and keep an eye on Cornwallis’s army. And there's gonna be an event called Pyles Massacre that happens. Pyle’s also, sometimes called Pyle’s Hacking Match, and basically what happens was that there was a body of Loyalist who are trying to come in trying to meet Cornwallis, and in the process of coming in they knew they were supposed to meet Banastre Tarleton, the British cavalry commander, meet his cavalry to be escorted in. But they run into Lighthorse Harry Lee's troops, and Lee's troops wears uniforms that are similar in color to Tarleton. The idea what we understand is that Lee was hoping to capture the men, but in the process of coming alongside them, they actually greeted them and we're coming alongside each other in a very narrow road in the woods. Somebody discovered who the other side was and once that happens Lee’s troopers pull out their swords and proceed to chase down a lot of the Loyalists into the woods, hacking them down. That's why it's called Pyles Hacking Match. But events like that, along with the fact that you could look back at battles like Kings Mountain where Ferguson's entire troop force was wiped out, things like Kings Mountain, things like Pyle’s massacre, are going to pretty much kill any hopes for the British to recruit lots of Loyalists while they're here in North Carolina. That being said, the chase again begins once Greene has come back into North Carolina. Cornwallis is gonna again start pursuing him, now they are in the eastern part of the state, coming back West towards Guilford Courthouse and Greene is finally going to turn and stop the fight him because what has happened is that up to this point, both armies have been similar in size. But in early March, Greene finally gets a massive influx of reinforcements. Lots of militia. And so almost overnight his army doubles in size. And so he's gonna have 4,400 men while the British are have about 2,100 men at this point. And with that huge advantage, Greene's gonna have confidence to find a turn and fight the British. And he comes back to Guilford Courthouse because he knows the terrain. They've been through here before. They passed through on the initial race to the Dan, so Greene’s coming back to a place he knows, he's coming back with way more troops than the British have, and that's really what's motivating him to finally stop running and to finally turn and fight the British.
Adrian: Talk about being outnumbered.
William: Awesome. So I wanna circle back real quick, and some of the things that you were mentioning, this decision to launch headlong in pursuit of the American Army, Cornwallis reinforced with this group from that's just marched up from Charleston; how much do we know, are there any fun tidbits you wanna tell us about this decision about burning the supplies? And do we know where that took place today? Jason: It took place at a place called Ramseur's Mill. It would have been to the West of where modern-day Charlotte is and what we do know about it is that the officers of his army also made a big show of making sure everybody saw them throwing their own unnecessary baggage into the fires It was meant to really show that this is a sacrifice, but everybody is making this sacrifice. And what we are about to do is do a very hard campaign to try and catch this rebel army.
William: Awesome. And talking about Pyle’s Massacre and the hacking match, I read somewhere that there was actually another incident with Loyalist militia shortly following Pyle’s Massacre that even more destroyed the Loyalist support of the British Army. Is that right?
Jason: Yes, yes, similar. Something similar happens where Loyalist forces it's, if I remember correctly, it's a slightly smaller body, but they're also trying to come meet Cornwallis. Tarleton was sent to meet them and this time they meet Tarleton, but Tarleton doesn't realize who they are, and he accidentally attacks the Loyalists and doesn't realize his mistake until it's too late.
William: Geez, so you're looking at two instances of Loyalist militia totally being destroyed, one by a, I don't want to call it a feint, one by a disguised, I guess that’s not the right word either.
Jason: I guess it’s like, it's like I guess you could say a ruse, a a trick.
William: Ruse! That's the word. Thank you. One group destroyed by this ruse by Patriot cavalry. This other group destroyed by a mistake by Loyalist cavalry. I can see that where that would greatly destroy any hope of the local people wanting to step up and go with the British Army when they're not even sure what's going on.
Adrian: Alright, Jason, so we've got the buildup, what actually happens at Guildford Courthouse?
Jason: So Greene's army is gonna come to the site that is today Guilford Courthouse, National Military Park. And he's gonna come here on March 14th and then on the morning of March 15th, he sends out cavalry to keep tabs on what the British are up to. They are 12 miles away at a Quaker meeting house on the Deep River. It's about southwest of modern-day Greensboro. And what they report early in the morning around 5:00 AM is that the British are up and moving around and then they start reporting that the troops are clearly getting ready to go somewhere. And once that happens, Lee is gonna go out even closer to where his pickets are to figure out what the British are actually up to. Because again, they're not trying to start the battle anywhere. What they're trying to make sure is where the British going, is it the entire British Army on the road? And so what's gonna happen is around sometime between 8:00 and 9:00 AM on March 15th it’s going to be the first fighting of the day. It's gonna be three short, sharp little skirmishes around what was another Quaker area called Newgarden Meetinghouse. Today it's about four miles away from the park. The Quaker society still exists there today and on the other side of the road from where they are, there's now Guilford College out there. But what happens on the morning is that first it's gonna be the cavalry versus cavalry. Tarleton’s cavalry is gonna pursue Lee's men up the road. Lee's gonna turn on them when they bait them down a narrow strip of lane and fire on them and counterattacke when they are bunched up in the lane and can't expand their cavalry out into a proper formation. And they drive Tarleton back. The next clash of the morning will be that then Lee pushes back down the road and runs into the Light Infantry and advanced infantry units of the British Army gets fired on and then he falls back, and then the last little clash of the morning will be the Light Infantry of both sides exchanging shots before the Americans finally pulled back because again, they're not trying to start the battle down there. They just want to see what the British are doing and after those little clashes they can confirm the entire British Army is on the road and is heading towards Guildford Courthouse. So they're going to retrieve all the way back.
William: Now, do we know, do we know how much time is taking place between these different clashes or are they pretty like back-to-back, one is slowly bleeding into the next?
Jason: They should be, uh, we believe they're probably back-to-back, very happening one after the other.
William: Wow.
Adrian: Okay.
Jason: So then all those troops come back to the main army here around the courthouse or report to Greene what's happening, and Greene starts deploying his men into three lines. Now he puts them into three lines, it's a very similar formation as to what you would see at Cowpens, but on a much larger scale. And the idea comes from Daniel Morgan because Daniel Morgan encouraged Greene to use militia to what they are capable of. Most these guys have no combat experience. A lot of them don't have proper training. They bring their own weapons and equipment from home, so many of them don't even have bayonets. So the idea is that don't treat them like regulars. Don't put them out somewhere and expect them to stop the British Army. Let them shoot shots. Let them cause casualties. Let them cause chaos. Then let them fall back and get out of the way. So Greene’s decided to do that by putting a first line of North Carolina militia close to the Hoskins farm, which is on the western part of the battlefield. So these guys are stationed along open farm fields where they can see the British deploying and coming. Uh, about 400 yards east of them in the dense woods is going to be the second line of militia made up of men from Virginia. And then the third line, another 800 yards east of them around the courthouse itself is where Greene is gonna station himself with his Continentals. And idea again is that if the first two lines are just supposed to fight a little bit but then fall back, the main effort will be the Continentals. Greene’s hope is that as the British are pushing through one line after another, as they’re having to fight through way through dense woods, hopefully they will be so badly beaten up and so badly disorganized by the time they get to him and his Continentals at the courthouse, maybe they can destroy the British with that main effort at the third line.
Adrian: Just out of curiosity, how many militia are there?
Jason: On the first and, first and second line, we think there's about 1,000 to 1,200 militia on each of those lines.
William: Geez!
Adrian: And where are they from? Do we know?
Jason: So the first line is North Carolina, mostly men of central and a little bit to the east in North Carolina, eastern North Carolina. Not, not a lot of men were pulled from the east because there's already British troops in Wilmington, so a lot of them are being pulled down there to deal with that threat. But we all, amongst the many units that are here are even the Guildford militia, this county, its own militia, are one of the many units that are going to be stationed at the first line, waiting at the Hoskins Farm.
William: And then I know, as far as talking about where they’re coming from, Adrian, I know regarding some of our Overmountain guys or Kings Mountain guys, Benjamin Cleveland and his militia from, you know, Wilkes County, western edge of North Carolina, they're in the area but they were more harassing the other region and keeping support from getting to Cornwallis. So I don't think you have a lot of like westerners there.
Jason: Correct.
Adrian: Well, you said Pickens was there, right?
Jason: Pickens had been there during the campaign, but the funny thing is that Pickens is gonna be sent away a couple weeks before the battle with South Carolina and Georgia militia because of what happens at a small skirmish called Wetzell’s Mill. At Wetzell's Mill, what happens is that Cornwallis, again trying to find the Americans trying to get them to turn off item, catches the American army off guard and pursues them, but in the process the militia are made to delay the British forces as the Continentals can get away across a stream. The South Carolina and Georgia militia felt they were being sacrificed to try and let the Continentals get away. And apparently they were in such bad humor, Greene felt the only solution was to let Pickens take them back home to rest, resupply, and then once they're down there, maybe they can get back to harassing British outposts and British supply lines.
Adrian: OK, cool.
William: Well, and this is Pickens and those same militia that had escorted, you know, fought at Cowpens, escorted the prisoners through North Carolina to the Virginia border, and now have returned from the Virginia border, they haven't been home since mid-January and now here they are in mid-March, or you know early mid-March with Wetzell's Mill. I can see why you've got some real hurt feelings here. Very sensitive issue.
Jason: Absolutely.
Adrian: I think it worked since they joined back up for the Battle of Augusta and Ninety Six so.
Jason: So we've established Greene’s using three defensive lines. What he's trying to accomplish with that? Who is at each defensive line? The British are gonna arrive on the battlefield sometime between anywhere between 11 and noon. And I mean, that's one of the many funny things about this era is that we can't always pinpoint the time things are happening because not everybody's carrying a watch around. Not everybody's consulting a watch. More often you will see somebody reference where the sun is in the sky, than you will see them reference a specific time. So we're we think at some time between 11 and noon and the British are showing up at what is now the western part of the park as they come near the Hoskins Farm. And waiting on them at the first line amongst the North Carolina militia are also two 6-pounder guns, two bronze 6-pounder guns. Artillery in this era is classified by the weight of the shot it throws. And when they see the British coming down the road, they start firing at the British, who are a perfect target at that point because at that point you have a dense column of men stacked up one behind the other. And in this era, you're not shooting shells that explode. You're shooting a solid ball on a flat trajectory. So what you want it to do is to go through several human beings, hit the ground, skip back up, go through several more human beings, and a bunch of guys stacked up down the roads is the perfect target. So the British do the smart thing and immediately start deploying off to the sides of the road to get out of the way. They bring up their own artillery to start countering, and really the first 20 minutes of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse is an artillery duel. British artillery and American artillery firing back and forth at each other about four or 500 yards away, as the British get deployed into their long lines.
Adrian: Do we know what size the British artillery is?
Jason: That is an interesting one because some historians think that they probably would have brought their 6’s up because if you're being fired at with a good size artillery, you'd wanna counter with something similar. But Tarleton in his memoirs says that he says the 3-pounders are brought up to fire.
Adrian: Okay.
Jason: And that also would make sense because 3-pounders are lighter, they’re more maneuverable, so they might be up at the head of your column. And then the last little kind of twist is that the one map we have made by people who are here, sometimes it's called the Haldane map as the original. Most people, if you've seen a map of Guilford Courthouse, you've seen what we call the Tarleton map. It's the Haldane map made by an engineer and then kind of spruced up so it could be put into a book. And if you look very closely at the bottom of that map near the Hoskins Farm, you can see the representation of three guns in the road that area. So I me I think Tarleton probably has it right in that if there are three guns down there, then it would make sense there might be two 3’s and they brought up a 6 to help support as well.
William: So we’re blasting away we’re thundering away with solid shots, skipping hundreds of yards across the field. When does, when is the step off?
Jason: So it's probably around 12:30 and this British Army that's about to step off is also very hungry. They didn't, they ran out of food for everybody that day before. Because the thing about this long campaign these weeks that it took to get here, they, when they at the same time they're burning their baggage and wagons, they're having to detach from any logistics chains. Now in the 18th century, any army going on a campaign, you wouldn't have the ability to ship everything you need from behind in wagons. You would need to forage, which is when you're taking from the local countryside. Whether you're just stealing it or whether you're purchasing it to help feed your army. That's been a major problem because this is, you know, winter, this is the middle of winter. So not much is growing. Anything that's been preserved for the winter has likely mostly been consumed already. And then an added problem for the British is that if you are chasing an entire American army around everywhere you go, they're getting to the food first. So after weeks of this, you now have a British Army who has been marching about 16 miles a day, six days a week and has run out of food. They arrive here and they know they have 2,100 troops, but they're only bringing 1,900. They leave 200 Loyalists, North Carolina troops, behind as baggage guards. They don't know exactly how big the American army is. The American Army, as I said, is 4,400, the British have estimates of anything between 7 to 8,000. So they think they're outnumbered three to one, and yet they have such confidence in their ability and they have such a low opinion of American militia that despite the fact that they are worn out ,despite the fact that they are hungry, despite the fact that they think they are outnumbered three to one, they are going to attack forward with the hope of driving the American army off the battlefield and destroying it.
William: God save the king!
Jason: And so at 12:30 on the day of battle, the British are deployed into their long lines at the Hoskins Farm, and they're gonna push forward towards the American first line of North Carolina militia to actually start the main portion of the battle. So we now have the British walking across open farm fields. Some of them are in the woods cause these farm fields aren't big enough to host the entire British force. If you can imagine being North Carolina militiamen, you've never been in a battle before, and 400 yards away across this open field, you can see the British Army deploy and then come closer and closer. But because you're all using smoothbore weapons, you can't do anything about it. You have to wait till they get within 100 yards before you can actually have a hope of hitting something. So the British approach to about within 60 yards and then the North Carolina line's gonna erupt with their volley. And we have two guys at the front line, one man who's with the 71st Highlanders, another man who's with a Hessian unit, the Regiment von Bose. And essentially what both of them say, they both describe it as though half of their units are being killed with the first volley now. That's not what happens. They both take horrible casualties in this battle, but neither unit loses 50% and neither of them are losing it with that first shot. However, what that tells us, though, is just how intense that volley must have been, because both of the witnesses that tell us this, they had been in several battles before and they had fought in the Seven Years War as well. So this is not the first time they've ever been under fire, and yet that's the experience they had from the first shot that they received. The British quickly recovered their composure, fire at the Americans and then proceed to charge in immediately because again, they don't wanna get into a prolonged firefight. They don't have any confidence that the Americans can stand up to them. So just fire at them once, charge them with the bayonets, and make the cowards run away. As they go charging in Greene’s plan starts to work and starts to fail in different ways. The way it fails is that the first line was supposed to fire two shots, but most of the middle of that North Carolina line only fires once. We have accounts of guys at the end of the line firing four or five, six shots. So that's one way it fails, it gives away a little sooner than I was supposed to. The success, however, is that it is causing chaos. Because if the center is disintegrating, that means the British units that are in the center along the New Garden Road, which would have been the road that ran through the battlefield, can now proceed forward without anybody stopping them. But as you go farther out to the ends of the British lines into the woods, those guys are slower because they're meeting more resistance. And then one last little thing that happens is that on the South end of the first line, if you look at any maps of Guilford Courthouse, you'll see the open fields, then you'll see a separate little farm field down there as well. As the Hessians came to that field, they were getting shot at in the flank. So an additional unit from the British reserve is sent to go push that threat away, and as they push that threat away, they follow it off to the southeast, away from the main effort on the New Garden Road. So the British have essentially cracked the first line, but already they have units getting ahead of their units to their left and right because they're meeting different levels of resistance. And now we have one unit wandering away to the southeast as it tries to pursue the threat that's in the woods. So now they keep going forward. They're gonna have to go 400 yards until they find the second line again. Something to keep in mind is that the British don't know if there is a second or third line. They know the Americans outnumber them, but when you arrive at the Hoskins Farm, you can only see what's across the farm fields at you. You can maybe see 1,000 guys. So that again, that's how confident they are that they can defeat this American army. How desperate they are to have a big battle. They push through the woods and they finally meet the American second line. And a similar thing is gonna happen here, where the lines gonna give away sooner than it was supposed to. Essentially what happens is that on the both the northern end of the American Virginia line of Virginia militia and the southern end of the line, you have these independent units decide they think they know what's coming. They think they see isolated British units coming to the woods and so they moved their men out of line to try and exploit what they think is an opportunity to destroy a British unit. In both cases, they quickly realized that there were more troops coming through the woods. On the north side you have whole sections of men flee the battlefield when they suddenly find British troops coming around their flank, one quote that's famous for this battle is Major St. George Tucker describes it as “a bunch of sheep scared by dogs” as the way he describes his own men. So just like that, you have a giant hole punched on the North end of the line. Meanwhile, in the southern end of line, you have a another case of mistaken identity. Almost in a similar way, you had mistaken identity with Pyle’s Massacre. What you have is Virginia militia who swung out a line. They saw the red-coated unit that was wandering away to the southeast and they proceeded to attack them and they get in their own little mini battle and the next thing they know is that marching through the woods is a blue-coated unit. And so I'll ask both of you, who typically wears blue coats?
Adrian: Normally the Continentals.
William: The Continental army!
Jason: Exactly. And if you are a militiaman who's only been with the army for about a week, you know, you know Maryland troops, Virginia troops of the Continental line where blue. So these guys see them come and they start cheering at them. They start cheering liberty at them.
William: Oh no.
Jason: They think, oh, we've got this British unit pinned and these guys are gonna swipe them off the battlefield. What they don't realize is that the Regiment von Bose, the Hessians, also wear blue coats.
William: Oh no!
Jason: The Hessians March right up to them and blast them in the flank. Adrian: Ohh!
Jason: And so the second line is finally going to give away when one last unit under General Edward Stevens finally gets it's, his men hold out the longest, and it's when Stevens himself gets wounded that they finally gives the order to fall back. So at this point the second line gets broken. It finally dissolves. But yet at this point the British have now lost all cohesion. So as these different units have given away at different time periods and with different levels of resistance, the British Army has at this point pretty much devolved into individual units spearheading their way through the woods, having their own little independent battles. So while the majority of the British Army continues to the east along the New Garden Road towards Greene’s Continental line around the courthouse to the southeast, that one British unit will now be joined by the Hessians, who saved them. And now you have two units wandering away to the southeast, a full third of Cornwallis’s combat power is now wandering away from his main effort. And so the the climax of the battle is gonna be the third line. And so if we have British units coming through the woods on their own, the first unit that will appear is the 33rd Regiment of Foot. They go to attack the American third line because they think they see artillery unsupported, but as they approach the American third line would be across open fields that are near the courthouse and are up a hill. If you go out there today, it's unfortunately wooded, it was allowed to grow up during the 20th century, but for the British they would be, essentially it's almost like a ravine, they'd appear on one end of the ravine. It'd be a clear ground. And then on the other side of the ravine is where more woods we would continue and that's where the Continentals are at the first British unit derived, the 33rd gets down into that low ground and it's then they realize they've made a mistake: It's not unsupported artillery, there's an entire line of infantry there and they get blasted from three sides. Artillery straight on, Virginia Continentals to their left, first Maryland Continentals to their right. They get smashed and go right back up the rise that they just came down. And so it seems like Greene’s plan is now working perfectly. It's exactly what he wanted. No sooner had those guys get repelled though, then the next unit appears. It's gonna be the 2nd Guards. The Guards units were elite units, very experienced in the British Army and they are gonna come up the New Garden Road. And they're gonna attack immediately across the open ground. And the thing about who they're attacking is they are attacking the 2nd Maryland. So, 2nd Maryland is a Continental unit, so they're professionals. They're well trained, well equipped. The problem was that this was the first time they've ever been in the battle before and they were in an awkward position. Instead of being in a straight line, you almost imagine they're line being like an L shape. The left flank was refused because again, if you look at any map of the battlefield, you had a bunch of open ground around the courthouse area, so they had to cover one section of open ground and then facing to their South they had a refused flank looking at all that open ground down there. So when the 2nd Guards appears they now need that entire line to swing back so that they're all facing the same direction and they can fire all their muskets at the oncoming Guards. As they try and swing their left flank down confusion ensues because at one point of the line, it's even a kind of hard to discern when you look at the sources, It seems like as the left flank is kind of swinging down so they can have everybody online together, the right flank seems to think that they're advancing, so they start to push forward and they have to be told to stop. And as they are doing all these maneuvers, the Guards are coming on, shooting at them, about to charge. 2nd Maryland fires one weak volley gets charged by the guards and shatters. And just like that, the left flank of the Continental line has completely disappeared. The guards now go to sweep up, they sweep over the artillery on that end of the line, they're going near the courthouse area, which is where Greene and his staff would have been, forcing them to flee. And as they're doing that, what's going to help save the day is that cavalry is going to come in, led by William Washington. So throughout the entirety of this battle, on both flanks of the American Army, we've had Lighthorse Harry Lee, who we talked about skirmishing in the morning, he is on the south end of the line, going back from the first line to the second line and then back into the separate fight. On the north side, William Washington's men have been up there, they've also had riflemen with them, and they go back and when he gets back to the third line, he's looking down the road and he can see the Guards attack, shatter 2nd Maryland and start swinging up. So William Washington leads his troopers in a charge and they hit the 2nd Guards and stopped them in their tracks. And that's just enough time for 1st Maryland to turn around because they, since they had attacked the 33rd Guards to the north, they now pretty much need to do an about-face to face in the correct direction to hit the Guards, and they're gonna march right up to them, they're gonna fire at each other at point blank range, one witness who was in the area, who was at the courthouse, the way he describes it is that it looked as though they were so close that the flashes of their muzzles were touching when they fired at each other, and then they're gonna charge and just like that you're gonna have a giant melee of about four or 500 guys fighting each other hand to hand. So the next thing that, the next twist in the story that happens, is that coming up to the opening around the courthouse on the West side of the open ground would be Charles Cornwallis, the British commander and his 3-pounders. So when he arrives on the scene, he sees his men in hand to hand fighting with 1st Maryland across the open ground and in the ground between them he has American cavalry. So what he's going to do is he's gonna take his 3-pounders, he's gonna have them fire grapeshot to disperse that cavalry because that cavalry could either attack his men again, or they could just easily turn and attack him and his artillery. And when he does that, that's actually a big myth that we have for this battle. The big myth surrounding this battle is that when Cornwallis chooses to do this, what he's actually doing is that he's firing his grapeshot into the mass of infantry because he is so desperate for a victory, he doesn't care if he kills his own men. The reality is that he is trying to disperse that cavalry, but in the process he's using grapeshot. Grapeshot is when you put instead of one iron ball into the cannon, one solid shot, you're putting a bag of iron balls about the size of golf balls. It's called grapeshot because when you see this package, it looks like a bag of grapes. And so when you fire it, you're turning your cannon into a giant shotgun and at about 100 yards that stuff spreads out to about a 10-yard wide cone of iron flying through the air. So if you have two guns doing that side by side, the way I describe it is that you're essentially throwing a wall of iron the size of a house through the air. He fires it. He hits the calvary. It disperses the cavalry, but a lot of that, a lot of those munitions are going to carry through and accidentally hit some of his own men, as well as some of the 1st Maryland. That's gonna get the American army, two infantry units, to pull apart. 2nd Guards retreats, 1st Maryland starts retreating and Greene is getting his army off the battlefield at this point, because once 2nd Maryland got overran, he was afraid of getting all of his Continentals destroyed. And when he came down in December of 1780, when he got command in the South, one thing that was established was that Washington made it very clear to him that he needed to preserve his Continentals. Militia have short terms of duty. Not all militia companies are great. Some have better training than others, so you can't always rely on them. But if you have a core of Continentals, you always have something to build around. So with that in mind, Greene was determined to get his Continentals off the field intact. So now the American army’s in full flight, they’re heading 12 miles north to the, their preestablished campsite at Troublesome Creek, and the British are gonna pursue them just for a short while. They get up the road, they take one volley from a a Virginia unit that really hadn't been heavily engaged, and they stopped the pursuit. They're going to start gathering on the courthouse. But that's not the end of the battle, because around the time this is happening, they're still hearing heavy firing going on somewhere to the South. If everybody remembers we had a one British unit, the 1st Guards, and the Hessians Regiment von Bose wandering away to the South. Cornwallis doesn't know this. Cornwallis doesn't know what the sound of the fighting is, so he sends Tarleton's calvary to go figure out what it is. They head about 1/2 mile to the South, and there they find those two units nearly surrounded by riflemen, light infantrymen, and militia. So when Tarleton arrives, he makes contact with the infantry and the plan is that they will fire a grand volley and once they fire their volley, he'll come charging in with this calvary to disperse them. Now what he's going to be aided by in this is that Lighthorse Harry Lee, who had also been down there with calvary, unfortunately, had left just before Tarleton arrived. Because what Lee did was he heard the fighting around the courthouse and went to investigate. Unfortunately, leaving those militiamen uncovered. So the two units fire, Tarleton charges in and he disperses the militia, and that's what actually ends the fighting at Guilford Courthouse. After 2 1/2 hour battle, the Americans are on a retreat to the north, the British are gonna start consolidating around the courthouse site to decide what has happened and what has been achieved.
William: So this this clash at the end of the battle to the southeast, separate from the main fight, is this where Banastre Tarleton is famously wounded?
Jason: Possibly we think so. The more reliable source on that is the, there's a Hessian major who says in his memoirs that that is where Tarleton is wounded. There is another story I don't even know the full details of it, so take this with a huge grain of salt, but there's some story about a family near the Quaker meeting house in the morning skirmish allegedly helping to patch up a wounded British officers hand, but again, the details are so vague that I've always, I've always leaned on the idea that the Hessian clearly saying Tarleton was wounded at the end fight, that's what I believe it is.
William: Especially if that's where his regiment was in the southeastern little detached fight being there to see it. And I had one other question about that part and actually about that, that regiment, the Regiment von Bose. I'd heard a story about their engaging in those thick woods and a wildland fire. Is this correct?
Jason: Yes. There is an account. There is a soldier who says that, and again one of the difficulties about studying history and trying to piece what happens is that that is also the only person who says anything like that. I don't see in the sources anybody else mentioning one, so to me that says at the very least if there is a fire starting, it must not be too huge.
William: So as a former Army Intelligence guy, how aggravating is it to have these incomplete spotty documents?
Jason: It's, it's, it is extremely frustrating. That's why I think sometimes we have to rely on, I don't know what's called, like experimental, basically the idea is that if you want to try and figure out any details missing, that's when you guys start being like, alright, well, how many men do they have? How wide does each man in a file? How fast do they march? And then that's where you have to start trying to like mathematically like piece together how fast they're moving through areas to try and, especially with like things like the second line. That is difficult because you have these distinct different things happening at different sections of the line but there really is very little way to tell what happens first.
William: So Jason, that was an amazing walkthrough of the of the battle, of the intricacies, you referenced the Battle of Cowpens a few times and looking at some of the similarities, but also some of the major differences, you're looking at this massive 2 1/2 hour fight, hundreds of yards several hundred yards between the lines, and now the British hold the field. Now, Greene has achieved his mission of preserving his Continentals, saving them that core of the army that you were talking about. What is gonna be the the aftermath? You have the British holding the field, but what is kind of the immediate next steps for both sides? But then also where do we see the ripples through the rest of the campaign, even the rest of the war? What ripples do we see because of what's happened here at the courthouse? Jason: Yes. So, so the immediate aftermath is that Cornwallis holds the field. Greene sends surgeons and some additional personnel to help treat the wounded. Both sides are agreeing to help treat the wounded. Wounded are gonna be treated at the Quaker meeting house at New Garden, and Cornwallis is only gonna stay for a couple of days. Again, he's run out of food for everybody, so he now has to get to his resupply point. And so after a couple days, he issues a proclamation about how great his victory was and proceeds to head towards Wilmington, 180 miles away. Now he didn't wanna go this far because when the campaign started, they had sent a unit into Wilmington and the idea was they would come up the Cape Fear River and extend the supply lines. For anybody who's unfamiliar with North Carolina, Fayetteville, which is the area of Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, is up on the Cape Fear River. Cornwallis is hoping that that river would be where his supply line would be, extending up to meet him, but the British unit in Wilmington was never able to get out because of the North Carolina militia were too uh, were harassing them too much. They couldn't establish a foothold outside. So Cornwallis has to go all the way to meet them now. Greene pursues him to the Cape Fear River, but then does not go all the way to Wilmington. Partly because he doesn't want to pursue him close to the coast, because the closer you get to the coast, the more inlets and rivers you have, so the defensible terrain will more and more heavily favor Cornwallis. So Greene decides to go down into South Carolina instead. And so what these two guys are now have to decide is what's the next step? What do we wanna do? And they almost have very similar ideas. The idea is that they want the other guy to chase them, so Greene wants Cornwallis to come back down into South Carolina because he thinks that would free up Virginia and North Carolina to send him men and troops. Cornwallis wants Greene to follow him up into Virginia, thinking that that will free up Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina to be pacified. Neither guys follows the other. Greene's gonna head down towards the British outpost near Camden, and Cornwallis is gonna head up the North Carolina coast into Virginia, where he's hoping to meet up with British troops who are already present in the Chesapeake area.
Adrian: Cat and mouse.
Jason: Exactly.
William: I'm I'm actually reminded of when I was teaching my kid how to play tag and they weren't quite getting it like “I'm it come chase me” and like, “no, I’m it come chase me too!” It's like, no, that's not how this works.
Adrian: Yeah.
William: Oh that's great. So you got both sides just kind of going their separate ways. Almost like Cornwallis “I won. It was a victory. Bye.”
Jason: Yep.
William: When you're trying to win the hearts and minds of people, like you were saying, not only do you have all these other challenges and these issues from Pyle’s Massacre and from the missing the mistaken identity, but now you've had this major battle, and it's a British victory, but you got to think when you have such an amount of casualties, you described how there are surgeons from both sides being sent. Do we know the number or at least the estimates for each side that are left there at the Quaker meeting house?
Jason: Umm, we don't have exact numbers for who is left at the meeting house, but in terms of uh, just general casualties, the Americans lose over 300 men. The British lose over 500 men and which for them again, being the smaller force, over 500 men is about 28% of Cornwallis’s force is gone with one battle.
Adrian: You can't, can't win a war that way.
Jason: Exactly.
Adrian: So you've already kind of hit on one myth with the whole Cornwallis firing grapeshot into the melee and just not caring about taking out his own men. But are there any other myths or misconceptions that you wanna try to set straight?
Jason: One that is not so much specific to Guilford Courthouse was one that we still talk to folks about a lot today is the idea that the British didn't know how to fight in the woods and just were, there's still this existing myth that, you know, the plucky American rifleman hiding behind trees and walls was shooting down these long lines of British soldiers who just didn't, could not comprehend fighting in uh, you know, scattered formations. And the thing I like to always bring up is that first of all, we gotta remember which war happened before this. We had the French and Indian War, so the British have a huge war in North America and there they are learning how to fight against Native Americans. How to fight alongside Native Americans. They are creating Ranger units. They are creating Light Infantry units. And so they're they are getting those ideas already so that by the time we get to the American Revolution, you have soldiers who are writing manuals on Light Infantry tactics. So the British understood how to fight in the woods. And the same sense the, you know, the American army isn't just a bunch of riflemen. They have Continentals. Continentals are fighting exactly the same way the British redcoat would have: dense lines, smooth bores, bayonets. And so when we think of combat, we gotta think of both units having those kind of standard line infantry units, both armies are using riflemen, both armies know how to use open order, which is another thing to think of is that we sometimes conceptualized the British marching around shoulder to shoulder at all times. It's likely that down here in the South, we would have seen them using open order, which is basically instead of having guys shoulder to shoulder, you'd be able to about, you know, kind of raise one arm and have enough space to just barely touch the shoulder of the guy next to you. So you have gaps in between each file, which makes it easier to push a line of infantry through dense woods and stuff like that.
William: And now on that topic, isn't isn't there an account from this battle of British troops engaging in a firefight with the third line from the prone position?
Jason: That I think that would have been that would have been the 33rd after they get smashed and go back, they do go up onto a rise and continue to fire at the Americans yeah. Also, up on the north side of that battlefield, that's also where you would have some British Light Infantry and also another Hessian unit of jaegers. So those are German riflemen.
William: Yeah. Talk more about them!
Jason: So yeah, uh jaeger, it translates to hunter in German, but those guys are, you know, they're carrying rifles. So the inside of the of the weapon’s bore is rifled, has a groove that will spin the ball, give it an accurate flight and they're trained to fight in loose formations just like the Americans are. And in Babits and Howard’s “Long, Obstinate and Bloody” even they they looked at the casualties on the north side and it seemed like the conclusion they drew was that the Hessians were also shooting at officers the same way Americans were, because to them, it seemed like there were in an unusually high amount of officer casualties on that part of the battlefield.
William: Interesting. So Jason, you were talking about the the story of the battle and, you know, doing a little bit of myth busting. Is there any kind of special topic related to this story that you just love to highlight, love to point out related to the Battle of Guilford Courthouse and the surrounding campaign? Anything that
Jason: I'm always interested to tell people about the Hessians because you know that is something everybody learns about and you, you know, there's, like the Headless Horseman myth. Everybody knows the Headless Horseman and he was a Hessian and so not everybody realizes the Hessians were down here in the South as well, and specifically the Regiment von Bose is a wonderful, just weird unit to study because these guys, most of them, had never been far from home before. Next thing you know, they are being shipped across the Atlantic. They will not see home for nearly eight years.
Adrian: Wow.
Jason: And their war, their war experience is they land in New York in 1776, they spend about four years of mainly doing Garrison duty. Not really extensive campaigning or long campaigns. And then in the winter of 80-81 they get shipped down to the South and have the hardest campaign of their lives, having to march, like I mentioned earlier, the reason they came up with that stat of 16 miles a day, six days a week, I know that because the Hessians kept great records, they kept records of how far they marched on a daily basis, where they were campaigning, what was happening. So the Regiment von Bose‘s journal is how I know how far they are going. And so these guys uh went from four years of almost like Garrison like duty to a hard campaign, a bloody battle, and they are just a fascinating group to talk about. And the the whole thing about them being mistaken for Continentals is such a unique thing that happens here, and I even had a walking tour, I still do sometimes, where I lead people through the battlefield in the footsteps of Regiment von Bose, and to the South of our park we have a park run by the city of Greensboro, and that's where we think the apex of that separate flight happens, and I always ask permission of that park that I can take groups in and take them onto the actual area where that separate flight was happening as well. So they… that is one thing about this battle that really caught my imagination and made me dig in deeper about what their experience of the war was.
William: That's awesome.
Adrian: That's really cool.
William: I mean, so while we're on the topic, I'm this is actually I believe the first time in our podcast, we've discussed the topic of Hessians.
Adrian: Yeah.
William: Do you wanna do just a real quick introduction explaining kind of who these guys are, why they're here? I know there's that big understanding, misunderstanding, “Oh, they're they're mercenaries.” I think a lot of the recent histories have been able to kind of put that one to bed and disprove that. But if you wanna just talk a little bit about who these guys are and where they're from.
Jason: Absolutely. So for anyone who's not familiar, Germany doesn't exist at this point. There is no one consolidated German state. It's a bunch of principalities in central Europe, and the British had for about 100 years at this point routinely kind of worked with German units like this. And the way I saw one author describe it is that they are not mercenaries because they're not individual soldiers of fortune. The way he describes it is that the Hessian states were mercenary states, so the idea was they would rent out their army and the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel would use those funds to to do, amongst many things, public works. He would make public markets. He did a very low version of kind of a health care for his people and he set up educational institutes. So the idea was that he was doing these public works and was able to do it without taxing his own people. And they did it by renting out their army to the British. So in that sense, that's what what my favorite description of them is that they were not mercenaries, but they were a part of a mercenary state. And so a lot of these guys are, I mean, similar to Americans, are coming from an agricultural background. There wasn't a likelihood to be able to get your own farm, really. Land was at such a premium that they are, amongst the many things they are surprised by when they come to America, is they're surprised by the standard of living most Americans have, the availability of land is very nice looking to them as well, and yet they didn't buy into the American idea, ideas and the principles behind the American Revolution, because the way some of them describe it is that the British Army, just won you a continent in a previous war and now you're rebelling against them? How ungrateful are you? So it's not so much, and yet we do know there are tons of Hessians who will desert and start a new life in America. And so it's interesting that that kind of give and take of not believing in the ideology, but seeing that things they have opportunities in America that they will not have if they go back home. And it's fascinating. And then there's also the fascinating part that in the propaganda of the time Hessians are described as these blood thirsty monsters. They'll bayonet, they'll bayonet your family and babies to trees, they'll eat human flesh, and yet at the same time that propaganda like that is being put out there, also, putting out offers for any Hessian who would desert with his weapon could get land. So it's again, it's like on one hand we're calling these guys monsters and at the same time, if you desert, we'll give you what you can become a citizen here and we'll give you a farm.
William: “That's what we need in our nation!”
Adrian: Gotta love propaganda.
William: So you mentioned all the different principalities, where was the Regiment von Bose from?
Jason: They are from, they are true Hessians, which I'm glad you asked that because we call German troops all Hessians. But they're not all Hessians. So it's several German principalities, but there's Hesse-Kessel is one so they are genuine Hessians. The reason we use that umbrella term is because of about the 30,000 or so ish Germans who come over 18,000 of them are genuine Hessians, and that's why the umbrella term. But there's actually I can't think of off the top of my head, but there's several different kind of small states in Germany and the German region at that time who are giving troops up.
William: Now do we have any records from the Regiment von Bose to have any idea how many of those guys, if any, did end up taking that offer of land and citizenship?
Jason: Umm, no, I don't think we have anything that could kind of give us a good number. The only kind of interesting number I ever saw was that we do have kind of a broad idea of who deserts or how many guys are deserting and when. And oddly enough, the biggest desertions occur after surrenders. It's almost like after Burgoyne surrenders at Saratoga and after Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown, it's almost like some of these guys could like justify it to themselves in their own head. That all right at this point, I've done my duty so I shouldn't feel guilty if I run away. Adrian: So you gave us some great, great stories, Jason, if people are interested in learning more, what are some places, resources that they can go to find more about Guildford Courthouse?
Jason: Umm, so our park has a YouTube page that includes some videos. It has our park movie on there if you wanna watch that. And it also has a virtual tour I created. Some of the best books on this battle are, umm, a former Ranger who used to work here, his name was Tom Baker, he wrote a book called “Another Such Victory,” so if you want a very concise book on the battle, “Another Such Victory” by Tom Baker is wonderful. The deep dive into the battle is gonna be Babits and Howard's “Long Obstinate and Bloody.” And then there's books about the entire Southern campaign, which are great. The ones I think of are John Buchanan's books “The Road to Guilford Courthouse” and “The Road to Charleston.”
Adrian: Yeah.
William: Jason one last final question for you and we've we talked a lot about you know, the past of course historians, but looking at a little bit of our future, you know with the time of our recording, we're a couple years away from the 250th anniversary celebrations, the 250th anniversary of the revolution beginning, of the Declaration of Independence. So as we're thinking about what is the future of our histories, what is the future of our our battlefields and our stories; what is something that kind of you personally would like to see or be able to do or be a part of as we move forward with commemorating and interpreting these places in the Revolution?
Jason: I am very interested in doing more programming to connect the war to the Constitution to understand how you get from being a colony, to having the Articles of Confederation, to the Constitution. I am interested in helping and doing programs, but I'll studying more to show how you know people are essentially having to create a brand-new government structure from scratch and when you do that, not everything's gonna be great ideas. Not everything's gonna work. And so exploring that and exploring the ways that these people are on the fly, having to try and conceptualize uh representative democracy is, you know, I I want more programming like that. And I'm trying to do more to essentially connect what I would say is connect the war to the Constitution, which is to say that the Constitution is the “So what?” of it all. You have a big war, well, what's the outcome? This is it.
William: Kind of figure out that bullets-to-ballots pipeline.
Jason: Yes, exactly.
Adrian: I love how we get so many different answers. Well, thanks Jason for joining us and educating us on all this great, great history and information. That's going to conclude and another episode of Southern War, a podcast about the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. To learn more about the American Revolution and our home national parks, check out www.nps.gov/NISI for me, Ranger Adrian at Ninety Six National Historic Site, www.nps.gov/OVVI for Ranger William at Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, and www.nps.gov/GUCO for Ranger Jason at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. Thank you for listening, and we hope you enjoyed it, and that we will see you again next time when we revisit the Southern Theater of the American Revolution.
William: Bye!
Adrian: Bye! [Outro sounds of drums, muskets, horses, and men fighting]
Rangers William and Adrian are joined by Ranger Jason Baum to discuss the 1781 Battle of Guilford Courthouse, the fight that one British general described as "long, obstinate, and bloody."